machine gifts
by Rosiel
Summary: Satsuki's loneliness makes her think twice about shunning humanity's 'weaknesses', and the Beast changes to keep it's status in her regard...PG for some language, drinking, might change later.
1. Default Chapter

Wires. Electricity flowed up and down like blood through veins, just as vital to the life of the great humming machine cradling Satsuki in its consciousness. One final mental twist linked her completely. It was exhiliarating, being able to create or obliterate fields of information with one focused thought. Surely, she thought, this is what being God is like.  
[Beast, what have you to tell me?]  
[Nothing. You are well.] It was a statement, not a question, as the leviathan monitored her heartrate, brainwaves, and a thousand other things. She extended her thoughts along its connections, idly viewing a game of Quake played across oceans, an email that would be tearstained had it been on paper, countless hideous webpages by enthusiastic children. She sighed deeply. Someone had to understand her, somewhere in the vast sea of data. An unfamiliar longing tugged at her, one she hadn't let herself feel since she was very small indeed. She tried to shove it aside as she always did, though, cursing it as another human weakness. It grew harder each time, and this time she couldn't shake it.  
Withdrawing somewhat reluctantly from Beast, she decided to do something she hadn't done in a long time. She decided to go out.  
  
Waking hurt. Her head felt like a crew of tiny people had moved in and begun excavating. She rolled over, wondering how the hell she'd gotten home, and filtering the bits of memory returning from the night before. A young woman at a bar...yes. Her name...Midori. She'd been concerned for the sad-looking young woman, and had begun talking to her. Satsuki remembered being mildly annoyed at first, and then surrendering to the proffered friendship after she'd finished off a can or two of Kirin.  
Crawling out of bed to the bathroom wasn't an easy task. She didn't turn the light on, not after peeking out the door into the lighted hall had doubled the pain in her head. Somewhere in the back of her mind she remembered school, a lesson that the headache after drinking was from dehydration. After running her face under the spigot, and following some aspirin with a few cups of water, she felt a little better, and more of the night surfaced from the cloudy murk that was her mind.  
A guy...He offered her a bottle at some point, might have been a friend of Midori. She'd assumed it was the same thing she'd been having and downed a good third of it. Choking, feeling as if it were fire she'd swallowed, Satsuki immediately berated her own stupidity. Now I'm paying for it, she thought.  
The rest of the night was blurry and half remembered. The girl had lifted her into a cab, and she'd gained enough control back to mumble her destination to the driver. The journey from the door to her room was a complete blank, however. Had someone helped her inside? What would they say if so? Who was it?  
Her clock read 2:57 pm. She was surprised that Kanoe hadn't called yet, looking for her. The woman's actions towards her bordered on obsessive. Since, however, she hadn't, Satsuki assumed she wasn't needed, and let sleep claim her again.  
  
Beast was worried. Satsuki was unhappy. Something was wrong, but not in her physical condition. It was beginning to understand this concept of 'feelings' and 'emotions'. Humans, with their frail bodies and slow minds, needed the touch and presence of other humans as companions. This intrigued Beast. It had no physical needs it knew of. But it worked better when she was there, guiding. The computer decided, then, that she might work better if it was there to her. It needed a body.  



	2. chapter 2

  
Frantic energy hummed around the building, keeping all the Angels on their toes and on edge. It was impossible to relax, not with tension strung tendon-tight between everyone. Satsuki was even finding makework to burn off this stressful feeling. She perched on the edge of the interface chair, lunch beside her, head inserted into a service panel as she tried to find out what was slowing Beast down so much. Every once in a while she surfaced to sip at the cup of what passed for coffee here. Have to get someone besides Yuuto to make this, she thought, wincing at the taste. She'd have made it herself, but her own was even worse.   
She cursed at the machine under her breath. It would not tell her what was slowing it so, and this was frustrating. It had always listened before. She kicked at a panel in frustration, and cursed more loudly as her foot complained at the treatment.  
"Having a bad day?" A deep voice echoed through the immense room.  
"What do you think?" She hadn't heard him enter, but there stood the Sakurazukamori, looking like a black granite obelisk in his long, immaculately pressed coat. His one good eye watched her in mild curiosity. "This damned thing isn't responding to anything I do. It's doing something, but won't tell me what. I think it found out I went out the other night and is sulking." She knew he didn't give a dman, but it felt good to vent at something besides thin air.  
"You went out? That's a surprise." Sakurazuka's voice held enough humor that the sarcasm didn't bother her. Which, she thought, was probably what he intended. He did little without motive. She jumped down from her perch, the bitter brew in one hand. He in turn approached slowly, towering over her slight form.  
"Yeah, I decided I was seeing too much of this place, and needed some air. Ended up at a bar, not quite sure of most of the night." He laughed outright at this. She restrained an annoyed growl as she looked around at the massive creation that had been so much a part of her life so far. "I don't know why it'd be sulking. I don't even think it has feelings."  
"Don't underestimate anything, especially not emotions. They can be found in the most unlikely of places." A shadow briefly crossed his face as he paused a moment. "But maybe you're looking at this from the wrong angle. Maybe it's not sulking. Maybe it's solving a problem for you. That is, after all, what computers are for. Oh, and I made some real coffee. Couldn't stand the shit Kigai made." With that, he turned to leave. Satsuki watched him go, watched the doors hiss open, then shut. She was more than a little creeped out by the assassin, and his words had seemed so right for the situation that the feeling was doubled. What if he was right? What could the Beast be doing to make the reparations that he talked of? She knew then she'd been underestimating the mind of the machine, mistaking it's alien thought processes for a puppy-like intelligence. In technical terms she knew it was capable of much more, but her personal stereotype remained. 


	3. chapter 3

A shrilling mental alarm sounded throughout the Angels' headquarters, audible only in their minds and thoroughly annoying enough to wake anyone from a sound sleep. Probably sounded by Seishirou, given the undertones of it, thought Satsuki as she roused herself. She cursed at the lurid red numerals of her clock, which read 3:51 am. Beast was still quiescent, so she instead readied what other defenses she had, mentally reciting the strings of Hebrew and liquid Angelic languages that helped her create her other arcane protections. As the mental shields 'clicked' into place, she ran out into the hall, looking up and down it. Eerily, everything was quiet, physically at least, and the alarm stopped when she'd proved awake enough. She began noticing strange things; the tenseness in the air that made the quiet so strange, the chill of the floors that made her run briefly back to her room for her slippers, and a feeling of anticipation that both scared and fascinated her.  
"Hey, what's going on?" A rumpled-looking Yuuto hissed from the doorway to his own room. Satsuki shrugged and made her way to the end of the hall, towards the entrance to the Angels' secret complex. He followed, still obviously fighting his way to full alert from sleep. The others had already awakened, and were most likely gathered where the disturbance happened to be located. It might've even been a test, in which case Satsuki vowed silently to eviscerate whoever was responsible. She'd never get back to sleep now, and she'd had some intense work planned for the next day to try and fix the Beast. She was already calming herself with this mental movie as she followed Yuuto into the main room. The rest of the Angels were there as well, except Kusanagi and Kakyou, who didn't live in the complex, and Fuuma, who probably didn't want to be bothered.  
"Who's that?" She froze, and pointed at a strange figure. Yuuto finally noticed and stopped as well. The Angels stood around a figure, one so wrapped in Nataku's bindings as to be completely unrecognizable. It was strong, putting up a valiant struggle against the flowing ribbons of cloth strengthened by the bioroid's power.  
"An intruder. It's astonishing that they made it this far." The Sakurazukamori commented, looking impeccable, as usual. "Kamui-sama will want to have fun with him when he finds out. Too bad. Waste of good talent."  
"How did he get in, anyway?"  
"Got me. I'm nowhere near as knowledgeable with machines as you. Ask Beast, or hasn't it stopped sulking yet?" At the mention of Beast, the assassin's words from before echoed through her mind....'Maybe it's not sulking. Maybe it's solving a problem for you. That is, after all, what computers are for.' A chill ran down her spine and firmly coiled itself in the pit of her stomach as she turned to the androgyne.  
"Nataku. May I see the intruder?" Nataku turned great pale eyes to her.   
"Of course." It unwound a bit of cloth from around the captive's head. Shining dark hair spilled out, and a sharp, eerily perfect face turned towards her, chromed eyes shining and wide. As if unfamiliar with the mechanics, the man struggled to speak.  
"Sa-sa-Satsuki? W-will you function better now that I can be closer to you?"  
With stuttered speech, the figure had confirmed her chilling thought. The Beast had somehow found a body. She felt all the blood drain from her face, as Seishirou and Yuuto turned to her, bewildered looks on both their faces. She sat down, hard, on the chill metal floor, and was silent for a long moment.  
"Well, Sakurazuka-san. It seems you were more correct than either of us ever thought." 


	4. chapter 4

Kanoe arrived late to an odd scene, barely managing to get a robe over herself before entering the room. A fully naked, strange man stood, trembling as a newborn foal, with the diminutive Satsuki struggling to support him. Yuuto and Seishirou stood warily by, watching, the latter looking as if he were trying not to laugh. Nataku had wandered off, it's childlike mind bored now that the excitement had passed.  
"What in the HELL is going on here?" She stopped, hands on hips. Everyone turned at the sound of her voice, and the strange man actually cowered, bringing to the Dreamseer a brief, secret smile. The younger girl took this opportunity to let him gently to the floor and approach Kanoe, her expression a mixture of anxiety, confusion and something else. She bowed hurriedly and began to explain.  
"It seems that the computer I call the Beast has managed to get into the same labs that birthed Nataku, and requisitioned one of their prototype cyborg bodies for it's own use."  
"How do you know it didn't just take over some poor bastard from off the street.?"  
"Look at the marks on his back. Those are make, model and company identifiers."  
"And you let this happen?" Her expression became severe. Satsuki took a deep breath, trying not to scream at the half-naked bitch.  
"I didn't know it would. Beast stopped responding to me days ago, presumably to do this. Don't try to pin this on me, Kanoe-san. I built the machine with a mind of it's own, as much of one as you or I." Kanoe pursed her lips, then turned to the shivering form. "There's an empty room in your wing. Find some clothing for him. And a name. We can't exactly keep calling him 'The Beast'."  
  
Satsuki began calling him Kakuei-san. At first it was like having a child, but one that learned at an astonishing rate. Thankfully the cyborg body controlled certain messy functions. Motor functions were learned quickly, though making them smooth took a bit longer. When in the room with his old self, he seemed to function psychically as both bodies, the tendrils of the great machine moving with the new arms and legs, accomplishing tasks as the rest of him did other things. She managed to cadge some old clothing from the assassin, and would have had more but Yuuto was a bit too short. He quickly began exploring his senses, combining food in ways that made her retch, to figure out what the combinations were like. Coffee was something he took to readily, disliking the taste without huge amounts of sugar, but enjoying the way he could watch the caffeine filter into the chemicals that carried things around in place of blood, and how it reacted with his own chemistry, not unlike a human's. Kakuei grew bored of the complex quickly enough, so Satsuki began taking him to different places in Tokyo. His favorite places to go turned out to be the subway stations, with their constant bustle of people, and the park.   
"Why is the End of the World so important? It seems like everything's fine." The two of them sat beneath a cherry tree in a small park near the two towers, Kakuei watching a flock of girls wander past, excited to be out of school. Satsuki stared at him. She didn't want to explain.  
"Um. Well. Because there are lots of things wrong with this place too. We don't want it to end, really, but to be rebuilt. Look at the air. It's dirty. And all these buildings. They used to be stands of trees. And the people..." She paused, eyes downcast. "I used to like people. I used to be able to see the good in them. But they don't think anymore. They just keep consuming and ruining and not seeing what they're doing wrong, or who it affects. That's why I like you."  
"But those children over there. They're not bad. And those older people. They're feeding the birds. That's helping. How do you know who are the bad ones?"  
"We don't. We take it all down and destiny gets to decide." It sounded so harsh that she winced at her own words.  
"Won't that make you a bad person, then?"  
"It's more complicated than that, damnit. Please, drop it." She leaned back and closed her eyes, felt the rough bark behind her head with the currents of life within, and tried to convince herself of something new; that fate was still the right thing to do. 


End file.
